I’ve long been an admirer and subscriber of the weekly British publication The Spectator, other than in relation to gender matters, where it relentlessly peddles feminist propaganda and lies in relation to domestic violence, and publishes nothing to balance that propaganda and lies. Feminist contributors include Julie Bindel (50+ articles!!!), Sarah Ditum, and the paper’s own Isabel Hardman, assistant editor.
The rest of the global mainstream media relentlessly peddle feminist propaganda and lies, too, of course, but that doesn’t make it right. I wouldn’t have expected such ideologically-driven censorship from The Spectator. The UK female managing editor in particular should be utterly ashamed of herself (more on her shortly).
Fraser Nelson, the editor, should be utterly ashamed of his capitulation to feminists. So deep is that capitulation, that the paper presented a Lifetime Achievement award to Harriet Harman in 2015, and a Backbencher of the Year award to Jess Phillips in 2016. Details and links here.
The paper claims a subscriber base of 100,000+ people, many of them in senior positions in the private and public sectors, the government, and much more. A sizeable proportion of the subscribers are well-off and highly educated. We thought it was about time they were exposed to some of the truths about domestic violence which have been well-known to researchers for decades, as well as pointing to some of the many men’s and boys’ issues which are this party’s primary concern.
Two months ago we came up with the idea of starting a crowdfunder to pay for a full-page advertisement in The Spectator, which would cost over £6,000 (for one page in one week’s edition). Along with Elizabeth Hobson, the party’s leader at the time, I created the proposed content. It was in a rough form (created on Microsoft Word) because we needed to have the content approved by the paper before engaging a graphic designer to “polish” it for publication. The document I sent to one of the advertising executives is here, and was sent as an email attachment on 18 February – over five weeks ago. It included this content on domestic violence:
Among the findings of the Partner Abuse State of Knowledge Project (2013):
“Men and women perpetrate physical and non-physical forms of abuse at comparable rates, most domestic violence is mutual, women are as controlling as men, domestic violence by men and women is correlated with essentially the same risk factors, and male and femaleperpetrators are motivated for similar reasons.”
“Among large population samples, 57.9% of intimate-partner violence (IPV) reported was bi-directional, 42.1% unidirectional, 13.8% of the unidirectional violence was male-to-female, 28.3% was female-to-male.”
Partner Abuse (May 2013)
(Next paragraph penned by Elizabeth Hobson.)
An empathy gap exists for male victims of domestic abuse. Feminist organisations exploit, entrench and expand this empathy gap through misinformation and misleading rhetoric to guarantee inadequate protection from this form of harm for men and boys.
“There are 4,500 refuge spaces available for women fleeing domestic abuse in England, 105 refuge spaces for men… and only 31 dedicated to men exclusively.”
William Collins, The Empathy Gap: Male Disadvantages and the Mechanisms of Their Neglect (2019)
After some chasing, the ad exec replied with this on 8 March:
Hi Mike,
Unfortunately editorial have declined running the ad as firstly the imagery is not something we would run in the ad and the topic is too divisive for advertising.
I will speak to our managing editor to see if she is willing to write a response so I will let you know.
Thanks
[name redacted]
This was disappointing, but we were prepared to omit the image of the battered man if it would mean the difference between publication and non-publication. Later the same day I sent the ad exec a document outlining our thoughts on why the paper should run the ad, asking him to pass it on to the female managing editor, which he promptly did.
We had no response from her, and last Friday I emailed the ad exec to say we’d run a blog piece on this sorry affair if the ad were not accepted by 5pm 29 March i.e. yesterday. The deadline passed, I emailed the ad exec again, and he confirmed the paper wouldn’t publish it. I have received not a word of response from the managing editor. So the $64,000 question is this:
Why does The Spectator relentlessly peddle feminist propaganda and lies about domestic violence, but not the truth?
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